The CDU boss Merz impressively announced a ten-point program together with Markus Söder, which only knows one opponent: the Greens. He does not mention the AfD in East Germany at all. Can this work?
The remarkable thing is less the success of the AfD than the speed with which the rival party CDU ignores it. The ten-point program presented with a lot of fanfare, even written in harmony with the CSU, does not make any reference to the AfD, which is radical right-wing in parts. Astonishing.
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Friedrich Merz and Markus Söder make up the Greens as the main opponents. One might even forgive the CSU for its one-dimensionality, after all, it has to pass a state election in the fall, and until then it only knows three things: Bavaria, Bavaria, Bavaria. Yes, that’s how it is, the CSU, that’s how we know it, nefarious and one-sided. Everything else is secondary to Markus Söder until then, to put it mildly.
The chairman of the CDU, who once advertised that he alone could stop the rise of the AfD, shouldn’t afford to forget so much. Or has he actually failed to notice that his CDU is in government with the Greens in Düsseldorf (his state), in Schleswig-Holstein, in Hesse, in Baden-Württemberg, in Brandenburg and in Saxony?
No wonder that Prime Ministers Wüst and Günther are among the harshest critics of Merz’s special path, for whom Merz is causing problems with his narrow-minded opposition in Berlin.
CDU program out of mothballs
These ten points, which are called program, come from deep in the mothball of the CDU: to relieve the middle class from tax, to promote property and incentives instead of prohibitions and commandments – Helmut Kohl and Norbert Blüm should, if they were still alive, be amused by the pathos of the year 2023.
The CDU has nothing more to offer?
It’s not just about Sonneberg (Thuringia) and now also about Raguhn-Jeßnitz (Saxony-Anhalt), the new AfD district administrator and the new AfD mayor. On the one hand, it’s about the loose to raw language with which the FDP, for example, scolded Robert Habeck (Greens) and his heating law, and on the other hand, it’s about more seriousness in actually all parties that call themselves democratic and differentiate themselves from the AfD.
Scheinriese CDU
The Greens know who they are and what they stand for. With cool professionalism, the FDP confines itself to its clientele. In the person of Hubertus Heil, the SPD knows what it is about, otherwise it is at a loss.
But the CDU is a pseudo-giant that doesn’t know how to take advantage of the fact that the government is at odds with itself. In opposition, she could have a wide-ranging discussion about what constitutes conservatism today. Being in favor of the Building Energy Act but being in a hurry to appeal to the Federal Constitutional Court – is the CDU hoping for a boost? Being in favor of climate protection, but please don’t be in such a hurry – is that the guarantee for 30 percent? If Merz wants to kill the main opponent with such feints, he kills himself right away.
Power obsession always goes hand in hand with power oblivion. The AfD only exists because the Union has allowed it. Friedrich Merz knew this genealogy earlier, when he was still allowed to dance frankly and freely on Angela Merkel’s nose.
The conservative that was supposed to go with it was intended politically as an offer from the CDU to former CDU voters in the AfD – and not as an economic evergreen that long-established CDU members can sing in their sleep.
The special relationship between East Germany and Russia
For example, it would be worthwhile for the CDU chairman to discuss his theses with the Saxon Prime Minister Michael Kretschmer instead of hushed up about them. Kretschmer says that “East Germans have a special relationship with Russia.” Which one? Poland and the Baltics also have a special relationship with Russia, determined historically.
